For some strange reason, we believe that anyone who lived before we were born was in some peculiar way a different kind of human being from any we have come in contact with in our own lifetime. This concept must be changed; we must realize in our bones that almost everything in time and history has changed except the human being.

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The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn't look like a violin is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult.

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Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen.

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One cannot demand of art that it pay you in any other way than in the satisfaction of the work itself.

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We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare.

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I love going to the movies; I love watching good movie actors. They must know something I don't.

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no work of art is ever finished, nothing is ever static, no performance is for keeps.

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I love playing Chekhov. That's the hardest; that's why I love it most.

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If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn't be an actor. You're in the wrong profession.

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Theoretically, the actor ought to be more sound in mind and body than other people, since he learns to understand the psychological problems of human beings when putting his own passions, his loves, fears, and rages to work in the service of the characters he plays. He will learn to face himself, to hide nothing from himself- and to do so takes AN INSATIABLE CURIOSITY ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION

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